


Eurydice Rising

by ExpatGirl



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Greek Mythology - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers as Orpheus, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 02:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: Bucky Barnes wakes up.





	Eurydice Rising

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurningTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/gifts), [aerialiste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialiste/gifts).



> I don't even go here, but you all seemed so sad, I wanted to give you something nice.
> 
> With thanks to BurningTea and aerialiste. They know why!

When he wakes, he’s in the land of the dead, though he doesn’t know it right away. Steve’s name is still in his mouth, heavy like a coin, tasting of blood and silver. And then the taste of water, cold and deep and strange.

Bucky sits up, water streaming into his eyes. Where _is_ Steve anyway? Weren’t they in the middle of something important? Something big, something that made Steve’s face fall into a blank of despair?

Wait. Who _is_ Steve? _Fuck._ Why can’t he....remember?  Something’s wrong with him and he needs to find Steve so he can fix it. He stands and the cold water cascades off of him, running down in rivulets from his fingertips, and—wait, _wait._ He’s pretty sure his hands don’t look like that. That seems important somehow. He shakes his head, and climbs up, out of the river, and on to the bank.

 He starts walking.

***

For a long time, he sees no one. The landscape is covered in mist that never seems to burn away, and the trees sigh, high-up and lonesome, though he doesn’t feel any wind. The sky is orange, the color of a sun that refuses to rise, and he can’t hope to judge the time by it. He can’t seem to get dry, either, though the cold goes, eventually. Thirst overtakes him along the way, but something in him—something brutish and angry, but something he feels like he should listen to—tells him not to drink any more.

 His throat burns, and he keeps walking. Surely there’ll be a—a port, or a town, or even a village. He’s glad, vaguely, that he speaks so many languages, though he’s not entirely sure when he learned them. He’s pretty certain he didn’t pick them up at PS 135. The Army, maybe? It _is_ the Army, right?

He looks down at his fingers, and flexes them. He’s got dirt under the nails of one hand. He puts his hands in his pockets, where they won’t trouble him.

The first person he sees doesn’t see him, despite the fact that he waves like a man in a riptide. They crest a hill and then are gone. When he runs after them, they’ve disappeared into the trees.

 “Damn it.”

 The second person ignores him just the same, striding out of his way as though Bucky (what the hell kind of name is _Bucky_ , he wonders) hadn’t said a word. By the fourth, the fifth, he’s starting to suspect there’s something wrong.

 The sighing of the trees grows louder, and he wants to lie down and rest, to take a nice, long drink. He’s kneeling in the river, the pebbles biting his knees, before he realizes it. He’s up to his elbows in cold, cold water. What’s the harm in just one sip?

 “ _Bucky_?”

 He stands, whipping around, reaching for a gun he doesn’t have. He takes a few steps back, into the grass.

 “What?”

“I’m sorry! I meant...Mister Barnes.”

 A shape materializes out of the fog and that—that is a child. A child with a dirty, familiar face.

 “You can see me?”

“You can see _me?_ ”

 They stand and stare, and Bucky gets the distinct impression they’re both thinking ‘No shit’ at each other, very loudly.

 “Don’t you recognize me?”

 “I…” Bucky shakes his head. “My memory’s not so great.”

 “Heh, yeah. Understatement.” Then the boy’s face turns serious. “Wait, you didn’t drink the water, did you?”

 “I, uh, yeah? I sort of woke up...face-down in it.”

 “Oh, man. Okay. I don’t know what’s up with it, but it. It does something to your brain. You think maybe the government put drugs in it, or something?”

 “Listen, kid…”

 “Peter,” the kid says, distracted. “Peter Parker, remember? Spider-Man?” He looks uncomfortable. Not that pubescent boys ever look particularly comfortable, but it’s enough to set alarm bells off in Bucky’s head.  “We—we got in a fight?”

 “I fought a _child?_ ”

 “I’m eighteen!”

 “How old were you when we…” He clears his throat. “When we fought?”

 He hesitates, and Bucky can tell he’s not going to like the answer.

“Almost sixteen.”

 “Almost six—” He groans and digs his fingers into his biceps. “Fuck it, I’m drinking the whole river.”

“No!” Peter shouts, grabbing him, and when his hand makes contact with Bucky’s bare arm, it feels like the universe shrinks down to the size of a pinhead, and then drills the pin straight into Bucky’s brain.

Peter, apparently, feels the same, as they yelp and fall back from each other.

“Steve?” Peter asks, sounding confused, sounding wretched.

" _Tony_?” Bucky asks, in the same kind of voice.

Peter’s rubbing his palm as though it’s burned. “We’re…” He stops.

“We’re dead.” Bucky looks around, at the river and the trees. “Shit.”

“What do we do?” Peter asks, and for a moment his face is Steve’s face, with a split lip and a black eye. And then it passes, and he’s a confused, freaked-out kid.

“We keep walking.”

 ***

After days—if there are days here—they hear the sound of singing, though it’s not in any language Bucky can decipher. It has the rhythm of a sea chanty, rocking in time to the dip and creak of oar-beats.

Peter was withdrawn and quiet at the beginning, curling in on himself as though he were cradling an empty space. But as they walked, he seemed to thaw in the presence of another person, and by the time the singing becomes clear, he’s already bouncing on the balls of his feet, eager to find the source.

“Look,” Peter says. “I think that’s a cave!”

Bucky holds him back. “Wait,” he says, pointing at their feet, at the red-mouthed flowers that surround them.

“What are those?”  
  
“What...you’ve never seen poppies before?”  
  
“Oh, is this like in _The Wizard of Oz_?”

“I loved that movie,” Bucky says, the memory bright and sharp, like a searchlight in the dark. “Steve and I saw it three times in the theater. Well. I mean I took us three times because he never had any money.”

“My Aunt May really likes it.” Peter says. “I watched it a lot growing up.”

“Do you remember the part where—”

The singing has stopped, and they grow silent and still. Bucky feels like he’s been placed under a bell jar. Peter grabs his hand, the hand that troubles him, and holds it.

The cave seems to disappear, too, and then reappear, much closer, before it assumes the shape of a man. Bucky steps forward, on instinct, to stand in front of Peter.

“Don’t come any closer,” he says, looking for a rock to throw.

“Me?” the man asks, sounding amused. His skin is dark and burnished, now gold from the light off the river (strange, there was never any such light to speak of before), now red from the poppies. “ _You’re_ the ones who came here.” He stops just in front of them, and Bucky feels himself go slightly dizzy. The man taps his own chin, considering them. “But the question is...why?”

“We’re lost,” Peter says, then immediately looks like he regrets it.

“I can see that.” The man narrows his eyes. “You don’t seem like you should be here at all.” He circles them, and in his wake is trailing smoke, incense, and the dizzy feeling intensifies. Peter slumps against him.

“No,” Bucky agrees.

“Something...is wrong,” the man says. He’s suddenly decisive. “I must check something with my brother, and he’s very hard to locate. Wait out here, by the riverbank. But do not drink. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter says, and Bucky nods. They sit back to back, and he can feel Peter’s head droop to the side after a few minutes.

“Bucky,” Peter says,“I want to go home.”

Bucky says nothing. God, he’s never been so thirsty.

***

When he wakes again, he’s in a cave, with light streaming across his face.

He’s no longer wet or cold, but everything aches, oddly, like he’s experiencing an entire childhood’s worth of growing pains in the space of minutes. He shivers, clutching his knees with his two flesh-and-blood hands. When he catches his breath, he notices the light has receded. He blinks with a newborn’s hazy eyes.

For a moment, he thinks it's the man from the poppy field; that he and Peter did something wrong and...oh god, the kid, where’s the kid, _where’s the kid_? He looks around frantically but he’s alone except for—

Except for.

“Steve?”

For this is certainly Steve. Ninety-eight pounds or one-ninety-eight, no one carries themselves quite the way Steve Rogers does.

Bucky watches a small earthquake travel through him at the sound of his voice, and yet he keeps his feet planted and doesn’t turn around.

“Let’s go, Buck,” Steve says, sounding more afraid than Bucky’s ever heard him.

“Steve, what—” He stands on unsteady legs. “Aren’t you gonna help me up?”

Steve shakes his head. His hands are clenched in fists so tight they’d dent steel. “Afraid I can’t do that.” Bucky hears him let out a breath. “Just, follow me, okay? And...and don’t ask me any questions until we get out of here. Don’t say a word.”

“I...”

“Buck, please.”

Bucky’s on his feet, and the change in altitude is nearly enough to knock him back down again. The air washes in and out of his lungs, so pure it hurts. He’s good at obeying orders, or at least he used to be. 

He’s followed this little guy from Brooklyn into a thousand fights he was too dumb to run away from. What’s once more?

He exhales. “Okay, Steve. Okay.”

They start walking.

***

Bucky once crossed the taiga from Magadan Oblast to Manchuria on foot, flanked by a silent keeper on horseback. He remembers it with a sudden clarity that causes all other lights to contract. Most likely, he had been sent to murder someone. All he remembers now, though, is the sense of mission, bearing down on him like the heel of some god pressing slowly into his chest. The hunger, the thirst, the jagged pain in his shoulder which he hadn’t yet learned to block out in those days: all had paled in comparison to that great weight. And other treks before, and after; some with Steve, as a smiling infantryman, and some after Steve, a silent assassin.

This walk, wordless and breathless, is a thousand times more grueling.  Steve’s steps echo through the cave, while his own barely cause the dust to stir.  His nails cut into his palms, and he lets the blood from them speak the way he cannot.

Steve doesn’t look back, not once.

 ***

The moment he steps from the cave, Steve catches him by the waist, gasping. Bucky almost wants to ask if he needs his inhaler, before he remembers that Steve doesn’t need it anymore. Steve turns to him, looking at him for the first time, and his mouth is bitten pomegranate red and his eyes pin Bucky to the spot.

  
“Steve, I don’t..."

And then he’s being kissed, kissed until he’s dazed and his legs begin to give way again. But this time Steve’s there, cradling Bucky’s head with his hand as it finds the cool grass and the rich dampness of the earth. Steve’s there, holding his other hand, that most troubling instrument, pressing palm-to-palm and then entwining their fingers. Steve’s on him like he’s trying to sink into his very soul. Maybe he is. Maybe, if his face is anything to go by, he is.

“I can’t believe you actually listened to me for once.”

“I promise I won’t do it again.” Bucky tips his head back, wanting to be vulnerable in a way he has some some control of, and Steve wastes no time in taking the invitation to kiss his exposed neck.

It _would_ happen like this, he figures. It wouldn’t happen in any of the carefully choreographed scenarios Bucky constructed growing up (well, that movie theater got pulled down, anyway), or in any of the fevered ways his brain had supplied as its synapses shuddered and popped like flashbulbs as the programming wore off.

It’d be like this, just like this, because Steve always got the last word.

Bucky hears birdsong overhead. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Not really,” Steve says, into his hair.

“Damn it, Steve.”

“Stark and Fury can debrief you,” Steve says, kissing him again. “Though, last I heard, Stark took the kid to Italy to get some gelato.”  He’s soaked the collar of his shirt through with his crying. “Later,” he says. “I just want to look at you.”

“Okay.” He moves a little, so that Steve rests more comfortably between his legs, and lets himself be looked at. “I missed you,” he says, after a while. “Even when I couldn’t remember you, I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” He settles himself to the side now, so that Bucky can breathe freely, but he doesn’t let go. “I...” He shakes his head. “We should get married.”

Bucky’s heart is a lump of clay, suddenly sprung to life behind his ribs. “What?”

“We should! It’s legal, it’s allowed, it’s...”

“What month is it?” He doesn't dare ask what year it is. He’s almost never liked the answer to that question.

“What...month?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s, uh. It’s April.”

“Two months isn’t long enough to plan a wedding, Steve!”

Steve laughs, a bright, boyish, slightly goofy sound, and Bucky feels it reverberate through him.

“If you’ve got Stark’s bankroll, it’s more than enough time. I bet Pepper could plan the wedding of the century in a week. We’ll be bigger than Pickford and Fairbanks.”

“Fine,” Bucky says. “If I get to be Pickford.”

“Sure.”

“And we’re going to Niagara Falls.”

“Niagara Falls? Buck, we could go literally anywhere in the world. In the galaxy!”

“My parents went to Niagara Falls.”

“Alright,” Steve says, kissing him one more time, definitive. “Niagara Falls it is."

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were two of the biggest celebrities in the world when Steve and Bucky were growing up, and their wedding was a Big Deal. Weirdly, though, they got married in March, not June. (Pickford was called "America's Sweetheart", so, you know.)
> 
> Also, when all else fails, descend to the Underworld.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading!


End file.
